Student`s Slaying Brings Fear To Once-quiet U. Of I. Campus

March 13, 1988|By John O`Brien, Chicago Tribune.

URBANA — Two young women wearing University of Illinois student jackets walked out of the physics building one night last week, making sure they stayed together. They kept to the middle of the quiet streets and remained under bright streetlights.

These were not unusual precautions for students on foot at night, particularly as a result of a rising crime rate. Local authorities said incidents of aggravated battery and aggravated assault are up alarmingly in some areas of Champaign-Urbana.

But the importance of taking those safety steps surely was reinforced by the slaying last Sunday of Maria Caleel, 21, a freshman student of veterinary medicine, in her off-campus apartment.

Jose Guerrero, 29, a graduate engineering student and a neighbor of the slain woman, agreed that more students are taking precautions. ``And this is a very quiet, very nice neighborhood,`` he said. ``All of us around here are surprised and shocked.``

Caleel was a straight-A student and accomplished equestrian from the Hinsdale area, where her parents own a five-acre estate.

An unknown assailant entered her third-floor apartment in a building near Main and Gregory Streets without force around 3 a.m., stabbed her once in the upper right side of her abdomen and fled, apparently taking nothing except the knife.

Neighbors who were awakened by a ``thumping`` sound and screams summoned police. Caleel died in surgery at a local hospital two hours later.

Police efforts to identify a suspect and a motive continued at week`s end, with all six Urbana police detectives assigned to the case, said supervising detective Sgt. Timothy Fitzpatrick.

Lack of witnesses and clues leaves investigators without a solid theory or motive. Caleel`s two roommates, one from Arlington Heights and the other from Berwyn, were away for the weekend. Police said they were unable to shed light on the mystery, except to help determine that nothing was missing from the apartment, Fitzpatrick said.

Caleel, who received her undergraduate degree from Brown University, was the daughter of Dr. Richard Caleel, a cosmetic surgeon, and his wife, Annette, a former model. The victim was the eldest of four children.

Fitzpatrick and Detective Michael Metzler spoke with the parents at their home Friday in an effort to learn all they could about the young woman, her friends and her acquaintances. Fitzpatrick said the information would be analyzed for leads, but: ``There was nothing that we haven`t heard before. Maria was an exceptional person.``

An attorney for the Caleel family, Peter Canalia, said the family was offering a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. Anyone with information is being urged to contact the Urbana Police Department, he said.

Homicides in Urbana are rare, according to Fitzpatrick, a 14-year veteran of the force. He said the city, with a population of 38,000, experiences about one killing a year.

Last Sunday`s was the first this year and only the third of a highly mysterious nature since 1979, he said. With one exception, the others all have been solved.

University Police Chief Paul Dollins has appealed to students to lock their doors and move about together. He also called for stepped-up security measures, including increased coordination among local police departments, more officers for foot and car patrol, and a doubling of the 25 police emergency telephones on the campus.

His remarks came in an interview and a speech, the latter given to university staffers on the subject, ``Is the Campus Safe?`` The speech had been scheduled long before the slaying, and Dollins called the coincidence of its timing ironic.

Police in Champaign, Urbana and the university ``should be doing more together,`` he said in the interview. Students ``must take more responsibility for their own protection to survive in an urban situation,`` he said.

Late Friday, Maria Caleel`s family issued a statement in which they said they will remember not how she died but how she lived.

``This Earth was graced by her presence for an all-too-brief 21 years,``

the statement read in part. ``Yet they were years of extraordinary quality, golden years filled with achievement, successes and personal joys few others attain in a much longer lifetime.``

The statement concluded by saying, ``Maria left behind a memory so bright (that) not all of the darkness in the world can dim it.``

Maria Caleel`s family members, friends and other mourners filled to overflowing the small Our Lady of Lebanon Catholic Church in Hillside for a funeral mass and memorial service Saturday morning.

About 200 of the hundreds who attended the service watched it on television monitors in a second-floor meeting hall at the church because the chapel was filled. Four friends from Lyons Township High School, Brown University and the University of Illinois offered brief tearful eulogies during the mass.

``Maria worked for tomorrow, but what she was doing today she loved,``

said a former Brown classmate. ``She enjoyed her studies knowing that she was going to be a good veterinarian and work with horses. . . . She did everything with all of her heart, and in the heart of anyone who knew her she was a success.``